Rock or Stone?
This object that sits in front of me, it continuously is called a stone, this is definitely a suitable descriptor, but at first glance this is not a stone, it is a rock. Maybe this is a result from my informal approach to this said rock, but a stone means much more to me. A rock is something you find in the grass or near a flowing river, a stone is something manicured. A stone is a rock with a purpose. Perhaps I am influenced by my architecture professors who often urge for “materiality”, and when stone in mentioned all its positive features and limits are mentioned all at once. This is where my separation of stone and rock becomes cloudy. I find a rock to be natural, untouched, jagged; but I find a stone to be smooth, placed and accounted for. There is a randomness to a rock that allows itself to be considered so organic, yet a stone is everything a rock is, but it retains none of its authenticity. So, looking back at this object before me, positioned on its flattest side, in my eyes it is a rock, there seems to be no deliberate positioning or staging. It sits the same way a rock I could find in my backyard would sit, content with gravity. Sure, you could call it a stone, now that we have a story to tell about it, but if we were all to never notice it and leave it behind, it would only just be a rock on the table.